---
title: "Middle East Roundtable: Don't Bomb the Banker."
description: "and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. is Evan Maloney, head writer for Fronts, Warfronts, Homefronts, all the Fronts that we got. am here with Kyle Moran. Wilfred Miner. It's been something of an insane week."
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datePublished: 2026-09-03T15:00:52.000Z
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---

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and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. is Evan Maloney, head writer for Fronts, Warfronts, Homefronts, all the Fronts that we got. am here with Kyle Moran. Wilfred Miner. It's been something of an insane week.

We have seen a return to strikes to the kind of kinetic warfare we saw early on in the war. U.S. Central Command said late yesterday, so to give our audience a sense of time, we're recording this on Wednesday, the 2nd of September, 2026. So yesterday will be on Tuesday.

U.S. military said yesterday that it completed its latest wave of strikes on Iran and the targets were extensive. They targeted air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets facilities, and mining capabilities and communication sites, according to the statement that I have in front of me from U.S. Central Command. Axios further reported that the U.S. military attacked two Iranian government tankers within the Strait of Hormuz.

So we're looking at strikes both within Hormuz as an attempt to retaliate against prior Iranian strikes and strikes within Iranian territory itself to try and dissuade Iran, you know, just further degrade its military capabilities. So on the Iranian side, Iran claimed that following an American strike, four people, including a child, were killed and more than 50 were injured at a home where a wedding celebration was taking place. So if the U.S. is actively targeting allocation such as this, they were probably sure that a high-ranking target was there, someone high enough that the collateral damage could be accepted, just to show you how intense a week it has been.

So for its part, Tehran launched a barrage of missiles and drones targeting U.S. sites in Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, and Bahrain. And yeah, we are back to the kind of intense kinetic war we saw earlier. Gentlemen, what are your thoughts on the week that has been?

So overall, I just, I'm growing frustrated, shall we say, with the just stagnant back and forth that's going on here. In terms of kinetic striking, at this point, none of it's actually achieving basically anything. hasn't not been for quite some time. while, like, the U.S. is pursuing its blockade, which is certainly going to take a long period of time as well, just, I question the logic here of continuously doing these tit-for-tat strikes. Although I do get that the attacks on shipping and Hormuz, which have continued, there was at least... two ships that were variously hit or hit mines themselves in Hormuz, I get that in Washington's perspective requires a response, but I also have to just wonder how many times we're going to do this exact round of Iran does something in Hormuz, U.S. bombs Iran, Iran bombs Middle Eastern countries.

Yeah, much to the chagrin, I think, of anybody who kind of had faith at any point in U.S. military decision making. At this point, it seems like this cycle of strikes is going on so long and is kind of going the same way again and again and again that it really kind of drives home, right? U.S. has its blockade-ish naval operations that are happening, right?

Some conversation about how that's actually being enforced, but sure, they have these economic measures, sanctions, so on and so forth. They have degradation strikes against Iranian command and control infrastructure, against Iranian missile launchers, all that, right? The U.S. has a broad range of tools to use in this conflict. them, they're all pretty good, right?

Given enough time, given enough kind of one-way traffic, right? You could see how this war could be brought to an end using those tools. Iran has one tool right now, which is its ability to impose retaliatory costs on the United States, and that tool right now works really, really well.

It's very limited. There's not a lot to it. It's obviously contingent on Iran's ability to put weapons on target.

That being said, it is more consistently able to impact the U.S. and impact U.S. decision making than anything in the U.S. toolkit seems to be able to impact Iran's decision making. And as we said before many times, right, this is a very one-sided conflict in terms of casualty counts in terms of destruction. Probably if you factor in Iranian reconstruction costs also in terms of overall expenditure, right?

But those tactical victories, no matter how many there are, there's not a point where everything else stops and the winner of the tactical victories contest gets a little trophy and gets to go home with a victory. That's not how this ends. And we're just in this rut, it seems like, where the U.S. has an ample range of options at its disposal here, but none that seem to have the sheer coercive power to change outcomes in this war that Iran's ability to impose costs on a cost-averse U.S. still does.

I want to interject with one point. There's one avenue where Iran definitely has the upper hand over the U.S. because as you said, Evan, this has been a very one-sided war in terms of just the cost imposed on both parties. But there's one place where Iran has a definite upper hand and that's on the political costs.

And that's why Iran's ability to impose costs on U.S. to attack American allies within the Gulf and you put that kind of political pressure, that's why that strategy is working it's one tool it's iran's only hammer it's the only thing it actually can do but it's very effective because iran doesn't have as much political exposure as washington does and that has been very effective for it yeah i do think that the just pure lack of caring what the iranian people think on islamic republic's behalf is inside i feel a little silly saying this but it is absolutely true that it's an it's an asset for the regime where they just simply can pursue this strategy perhaps indefinitely or as long as they see fit the one thing i will say about this is evan and i were talking for a minute before this show and we were discussing how if the u.s had gone into this with even a plan not even necessarily like dramatically better plans but just a plan on combating iranian drones and something on hormuz or if iran had come into this with any regional any approach to engaging with the region to make this less of a 1v1 this war would be dramatically different in my opinion i mean we would see significantly different and in my opinion most likely shorter war because it would just be something neither side could really continue to keep fighting for is such indefinite periods of time but it seems to be almost that both sides have pursued things in just like the least strategic way possible on those fronts where iran's just consistent refusal to work with the region and washington's seemingly inability to shoot down drones with anything other than very expensive interceptors has really just come back to bite it so i mean if we look at like what would the conflict with hormuz look like if from day one iran had resolutely pursued close ties with qatar and with oman i would have to imagine that there would be countries in the in the middle east who would be much more willing to go along with what it wants in the straight but instead i mean qatar was recently bombed just the other day or yeah i think it was excuse me jordan in the uae who was bombed but qatar still weighed in on this they have been bombed many a times by iran themselves and they put out a press statement that's not none too kind saying it holds the islamic republic of iran fully legally responsible for these attacks and for any resulting repercussions and consequences they've certainly won themselves no friends yeah it's kind of that question of can iran get further at this point by demonstrating its ability to strike strong arm in the Middle East than it could by any other means. And we've talked about this before on the podcast as well, that the rest of the Middle East prior to this war was kind looking to move on from Iran. We're going to have some conversation later today about Israel and Turkey and that whole Cold War flaring.

We could look at Saudi and the Emirates. I mean, look back at the Emirates in like December and January of this year, they were going gangbusters. They had the whole thing in Yemen.

It looked like they were on the verge of something pretty big in, sorry, where am I thinking? Libya. But now Iran is kind of coming out and looking to apply this coercive pressure and kind of force itself back to the mainstream.

And I think it's a question worth asking, right? I'm not trying to really hazard a guess as to what the answer should be, right? Iran's position, trying to take direct control over the Strait of Hormuz, does that do more for Iran by establishing this kind of permanent point of leverage over the Gulf states?

Or does it do more to harm Iran's long-term prospects? And Kyle, I know you want to weigh in on this, so I'll step aside and defer to you. Yeah, so this is such an interesting point to me because so when we at the start of this year, when Iran was transferring so much of its both national as well as personal wealth of the elite there out of the country because they knew a war was likely or was at least potentially coming, they did so largely to the Emirates, who have been in the receiving end of so much of these strikes.

Now, we can get into that in a sec, but I do just want to emphasize the choosing of the Emirates for the wealth transfers was not completely random. Iran and the UAE had spent years trying to engage in better relations throughout the region. They had long been at odds and they were slowly moving in a direction where they were actually talking to each other again.

And it had really yielded some actual fruit in terms of less hostile will, shall we say. All of that has just been completely blown up, literally, since then. So overall, I just have to think, if this had been better thought out by either side, we would be in just such a dramatically different situation now.

But unfortunately, the brighter minds did not prevail is how I'll put that one. So I want to go back to the question that Evan asked before Kyle jumped in about what this trying to control the Strait of Hormuz does for Iran in the long term. So there's a statement that US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said yesterday during a discussion with Larry Cardlow at the G20 financial meeting in Asheville, North Carolina.

He said that the Strait of Hormuz will be bypassed within two years. Evan just looking to move on from Iran before this was started. So could we be looking at a situation where the Middle East is looking to move on, not just from Iran, but also from the state of Hormuz, this waterway that Iran has propped up as one of its most important geostrategic tools?

Because we've already seen alternatives springing up. Saudi Arabia has pushed roughly 7 million barrels of oil per day through its east-west pipeline to the Red Sea. And we've been using the port of Yanbu as an alternative exit point.

And the UAE has plans to build a west-east pipeline which will double oil export capacity through Fujairah, which sits outside of Hormuz, from 1.8 million barrels per day to 3.6 million barrels per day. And this will come online in 2027. has its own plan. It has a proposed pipeline through Syria to the Mediterranean, which would cost at least 15 billion and take four years to build.

But just the fact that all of these countries are discussing alternatives, could we be looking at a Middle East that's moving on from the state of Hormuz? Yeah, I think that's a really important question to be asking. And there's also, I want to add to your list, there's also some talk about a Turkish pipeline, essentially, that would run down through Iraq into Turkish territory and then out into the Black Sea or the Northern Mediterranean, which would be, obviously, a very interesting addition to kind of the overall energy market in this part of the world, especially as Turkey is kind looking to lock down the Black Sea and become a security guarantor in that being said, right, there are two key problems, as I see it, one of which would be time.

These things, said, would take years and years to build. I think you said four years on the Iraqi project. It would take a And then, as we've seen, right, the idea that Iranian the Strait of Hormuz has proven incorrect.

Early in the war, it was not really a surprise that Iran retaliated against the Middle East when the US went in. It was a surprise that they really forcefully went after Fujairah. It was a surprise when they brought in strikes to the Red Sea, to the best extent that they could, or at least threaten their ability to do so, and then brought in the Houthis to do the same.

The idea that Iran would expand its imposition of costs beyond the Strait of Hormuz and beyond the Persian Gulf was more of a surprise. Just that Iran was willing to escalate that quickly. And with this, I think it does set up an interesting possibility for these countries to try and pursue.

I also worry that it, quite frankly, builds a lot of pipeline to be hit. These are very long structures, typically in areas that are secluded, that are vulnerable to air defense, sorry, that are vulnerable to attack from the air because of a lack of air defense. And over the next few years, if this is what other countries want to pursue, Iran will have a vested interest in making sure that doesn't happen. so i think there will be an instability premium to pay if that makes sense right if you want to build all this infrastructure you can give it a shot there will be kind of a period that you opt into of greater instability across the middle east before that happens so speaking of that instability premium i want to go to something that you covered in a recent episode evan the mecca accords that brought together saudi arabia pakistan turkey these are all countries minus pakistan saudi arabia and turkey have vested interest making sure that anything that happens you within their borders within their sphere of influence they can keep these pipelines safe right so how are we looking at or rather what's your take on you know the mecca accords a restraining factor on iran's ability to strike these pipelines well i think they certainly could be but at this point the mecca countries have to prove that this has teeth in some way nato's article 5 clause of collective defenses is i mean it's historically pretty ironclad but we're even seeing that being questioned right now where we're talking about russian potential hybrid attacks on europe or a limited incursion into a nato country basically taking a little bit of territory that nato could afford to you know afford to lose really like if you take a tiny little bit of like empty eastern finland right how many nato troops are supposed to and die to get that back right so even with nato that collective defense clause is kind of in question that's something that the mecca states have tried to adopt again this is turkey saudi arabia and pakistan that's something they've tried to adopt there's a lot of open questions about their credibility right now and especially in these few early months as they're starting to stand up kind of leadership infrastructure strategic command so on so forth now we've seen some deployments already in this alliance where pakistan i think has sent several thousand troops to saudi arabia as well as defense systems as well as fighter jets those are mostly sitting idle right now their their job seems to be essentially just defend saudi airspace and don't retaliate but even still right that is a meaningful display of pakistan's willingness to get on in on this fight i think in order to build up a credible strategic umbrella across those nations shared interests in the middle east to need to see more proof of that and iran quite frankly will go looking for proof because if iran can go looking for proof and find none right if it can demonstrate that these countries will not defend each other in a pinch well then all of it's for nothing anyway right so i think iran will be probing into that in these countries if they're going to do this have to be ready for the idea that iran will be testing their commitment to each other will be testing their commitment to regional security and to this new energy infrastructure if they choose to build it will be extremely ironic if the mecca countries proved that they were more committed to defending each other other than NATO countries have been to Article 5. you had a thought, tell me. so they're in a very unique situation because they were sort of born in a crisis, whereas typically alliances, they maybe started during a crisis, but less so formalized during one. overall, the fact that Saudi has been repeatedly coming under Iranian attack, and to your point, Evan, definitely worth noting that Pakistan has been willing to dispatch forces, fundamentally, like your point that they're just sitting on the tarmac there is also kind of the issue. certainly not to say that they can't escalate if they choose to, but the question really will come down to if they choose to. overall, it's something that I think they're going to have to prove they're serious about in the long term rather than just merely putting out a few nicely worded press statements about how much they're committed to the alliance. agree.

And going back to the idea that kind of the Middle East was ready to move on from Iran, guys certainly went public with their affiliation in a crisis. it is worth noting, this has been brewing for a while. if you look back at some of our prior coverage before this war began, for example, December and January, we were talking then about how, that point, it was kind of this quad group of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, which has been in discussions to join the Mecca Accords, and then Qatar, which had recently been by an Israeli airstrike to decapitate Hamas' political leadership there. And that was, at that time, big escalatory action in the Middle East, right? Little did we know what was coming.

But even then, there was plenty of about these nations starting to put out feelers for an alliance like this. Now, they seem have gone public and moved up their timeline because of the war in Iran and the collateral damage that's brought across the Middle East. being said, this is ideally for these nations, not an alliance that is about Iran at all. is very much a third faction. That's the faction that these guys are trying to oppose comprises Israel, comprises the Emirates, comprises Morocco, Ethiopia, increasingly now, India is starting to get involved, right?

Because Pakistan's on the other side, so India wants to try and shore up its own. Yeah, I know, right? they, you know, they and Pakistan are kind of the nuclear guarantors behind both sides of this growing alliance network. the way, alliance network is kind of like overly formal for what this is. Emirates, India, so on, really prioritize kind of the appearance of strategic ambiguity. we are talking something they're overtly behind the scenes, but trying not to name publicly.

So, but all of that is to say, right, these countries will have to work together to try and impose some sort of counterweight against Iranian control in the Middle East and the straight-up form of specifically. It's also not their primary objective. And I think there will be part of them that may even be willing to accept a degree of cooperation with Iran under these circumstances, if it means being able to turn and rally against these countries that they quite frankly consider to be greater long-term enemies than Iran ever will be.

Somewhere baked into that has to be the, some part of willingness to work with these guys on the Iranian perspective, which sort of just circles back to the thing that I opened with this with, which is this is sort of amateur hour, I feel like, because we just cannot escape from the fact that fundamentally, I feel like as the entire, like both the US and Iran have just pursued things from completely going in with their hands over their face, like completely blind saying, you know what, we're just gonna go jump headfirst into this thing and see what happens. Yeah, I do wonder whether there will be some place for cooperation between these two larger factions at some point in the future over the Iranian issue. I think if there's anything that these two groups could agree on within the next 10 to 20 years, it's going to be, hey, why don't we just get Iran to shut up permanently, right?

Just take this rogue nation, essentially, that's getting in the way of everybody's stuff and either sequester them or, you know, try and create some political change or engage in military hostilities, whatever it is, right? As these Gulf states, as the Turkish military, as the Egyptian military, as the Saudi military, as the Israeli military all continue to kind of build up and become more independent, right? Maybe there is room for those sorts of operations to curtail Iran from within the Middle East in the future.

It does not seem like we're there or anywhere close right now. I disagree. I don't think even in the future, there will be room for such maneuvering because the Saudi faction seems much closer to Iran and they are much more willing to use it as a sort of cudgel against the Israeli faction.

So just keeping that in mind, it seems like in the best interest of the Saudi faction to have Iran continue to be as belligerent as it is, you know, as counterintuitive as this might seem, you know, with everything that's happening in places like the Red Sea with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia being at each other's throats, it would be in, you know, their best strategic interest to keep Iran as a player the board, not as someone they want to quiet That's an interesting point. It's well taken. And I do to point out though, Kyle mentioned earlier, right?

The Iranians willingness to move so many of their assets over to the Emirates, right? When you look at the closeness of the links between the Emirates and Israel, and you think about in context to the fact that the Emirates are still willing to work with Iran, right? I don't know if it's so cut and dry as to say Israel and Iran have been absolute polar enemies for all of this time. always absolutely be polar enemies under all circumstances, right?

I think there's certainly a debate here, right? Because for either of these groups, I think if they can weaponize Iran to their advantage, rather than expending resources, expending lives, on, to try and curtail Iran, right, they will choose to weaponize Iran first if they have that option to do so. do think it's more of an open question as to who's going to get to do that first. think it isn't as much of an open question as it might right now, because of the UAE's increasing willingness to shut Iran outside, out of its financial system. And this is something that they've been working with in concert with the American Trump administration and being guided by Scott Peasant as part of his economic D-Day plan to try and cripple Iranian economy as much as possible.

I have an episode about this coming out later this week. But the simple fact that the UAE has proven willing to shut Iran out of its financial system, and how, as well as the fact that the UAE was one of the countries that was covertly bombing Iran throughout this war, gives me reason to believe that Iran will be very, very hesitant when it comes to its relations with the UAE in future. Certainly.

And I do think this is worth watching as it kind of all plays out from here. want to shift gears just a little bit. to the most recent strikes we've seen back and forth, there was some interesting reporting from the U.S. side, from insider sources, supposedly in the Pentagon and in Jordan, about the rates of expenditure, particularly of Patriot missiles. There one report that, honestly, to me, does not seem totally grounded in reality, but I think it's worth mentioning anyway for reasons that I'll get to. Basically saying Iran launched something like, I think it was below 20 missiles at Jordan after that first round of strikes where the U.S. hit a pair of missile launchers that were basically launching sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz, allegedly, are preparing to do so.

But in response to the Iranian missile retaliation, so the reporting goes, Jordan and the associated forces there expended several dozen missile interceptors to try and bring those missiles down, as, I believe, some drones. So missile interceptor shortages right now are kind the global issue that U.S. allies are running into. Everybody's dependent on the Patriot system to some degree.

Patriot interceptors, in particular, are running critically low. There's been some conversation in the U.S. that we're going to get to that the U.S. is running through its stockpiles much too quickly to sustain this war. do you make of, I suppose, the concerns over and these rumored, again, not confirmed, right, reports of how quickly the U.S. is burning through missile interceptors at this stage of war, particularly as it relates to Iran's ability to keep on striking, right? Do you... see this as any kind of a kind of a competing countdown on both sides where, yes, Iran has missiles.

Yes, the U.S. has interceptors. Really, it's about who can afford to expend more right now. And where do you think that balance goes?

I don't think it's much of a countdown clock. Rather, it's about how much cost each side is willing to incur. Because the reason why America is using up so many interceptors is because it has to defend its allies in the region.

And we've talked ad nauseum about how Iran extends the war horizontally just to inflict as much political costs on the U.S. because, as we've said before, Iran can withstand a lot more political pressure than the U.S. the U.S., if it gets complaints from its allies in the region, then it has to bow to this pressure. Because if a country like, let's say, Jordan, for example, decides that we can't take any more of this. We are suffering because we're hosting an American airbase. the strategic calculus demands that this airbase, in order for us to have our security, puts a lot of pressure on the U.S. because all of these airbases, all of these bases that it has in the Middle East are very important to its security and its ability to project power in the region.

So it's not as much of a countdown clock as a question of who can withstand more pressure. The U.S. will continue to expand as many interceptors as it has in its arsenal because protecting these countries is worth a lot more than, you know, the cost of these interceptors and, you know, the risk that come with having fewer interceptors in the stockpile as few as it does right now. So as long as Iran can continue to impose a cost, then that's the calculus that Washington will be doing. honest, I have to think that 50 years from now, we will look back on this.

And I mean, the history of this war is not going to be a positive one. I can assure you of that. But the overall lesson that may have come away from it is a sincere and severe wake up call to Washington that it needs to get in the drone game and counter drone game.

It had basically just been slow walking this for so long at this point. And even now, we're not really killing it on that front. But there's at least been progress.

So I do have to imagine that this is I mean, there certainly should have been better ways to learn this lesson. But I think the lesson has nevertheless been learned to some extent. And I think long term, that's going to be a positive for Washington's long term military approach to various conflicts.

So you'd think that given what has happened in Ukraine, given what is happening in Iran right now, that Washington would have learned the lesson that it's important to get in the drone game and the counter drone game. But according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, yeah, Washington is not learning that lesson. So there was a unit in the U.S. Army that was participating in cutting edge drone research.

It was learning from places like Ukraine, it was learning in Europe, all the ideas and tactics that go into the most advanced drone warfare that we've seen. And Washington really was trying to learn these ideas, these tactics, these lessons, but that unit is being phased out. After participating in a major exercise in Germany, and I'm quoting this directly from the Wall Street Journal, after participating in a major exercise in Germany in August and September, the unit will report its findings to the Army to guide further experimentation. will shed its drone assault role and focus on its core warfighting task as an airborne infantry battalion. is what an Army official told the Wall Street Journal.

So the elimination of a futuristic drone battalion is part of a broader back-to-basics approach, ordered by General Christopher Laniv, the acting chief of staff of the Army, who is closely aligned with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. the battalion was a signature initiative of Laniv's predecessor, General Randy George, whom Hegseth ousted in April this year. So you'd think that the U.S. is learning the kind of important lessons that we wanted to learn, but you're given the fact that it's phasing out a battalion that was specifically meant to learn these lessons. not confident at all in its ability to counter drones anytime soon. Yeah, that news was very discouraging from my perspective. by way, for folks listening, is something that I've followed very closely for a while.

There are some developments going on in the U.S. side, really all across the board, that kind of continue that effort, right? I do want to give some credit to the U.S. military that, like, one drone battalion was not responsible for all of the drone warfare research at the United States. year 2027, the U.S.'s budget proposal set aside about as much money as they gave to the U.S. Marines in the prior year to create something called the Drone Autonomous Warfare Group. The acronym for that is DOG.

I apologize to all of our non-American listeners out there. Don't worry about it. to say, I look at things like that expenditure where one of two things was happening, right? Either massive corruption on scales unseen or the U.S. military trying to lay the foundations for a drone branch of its military, right?

Looking at just how much money was being devoted to that. it's difficult to really say for certain, you know, the U.S. is totally giving up on drone warfare. But you look at of the smaller signs like that about unit integration and trying to figure out how to make these tactics work on the battalion level to shut down units like that without doing anything really with their findings which hasn't been any indication that's what's going to happen would suggest many lessons that were not learned in ukraine yeah i mean i think both you guys are completely true with what you're saying there so basically the u.s in my view is learning that it simply cannot ignore this any longer now the implementation of the rollout of that lesson might not be picture perfect at this point it might be worse than picture perfect even but i don't think anybody in the armed forces is going to take away from this that we can just continue with the assumption of using extremely expensive extremely long time producing munitions like patriot interceptors and fad and whatnot on any type of scale like this i want to bring in a report from the washington post so this was from a few days ago i'm just going to quote it to you quote several u.s military leaders have advised defense secretary pete hegsa that prolonging long scale large-scale operations against iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere including the u.s homeland so on so forth this is from the secretary of defense orders book which is a report that goes out to the secretary of defense every two weeks or so it's put together by the heads of the army navy and air force as well as the four star generals who oversee u.s operations in europe asia latin america they kind of collaborate on this report every couple weeks to kind of let the defense secretary know where the u.s is at quoting again the sdob continues outlines the worldwide availability of u.s warships aircraft personnel and weapon systems so that is to say these folks are coming together and kind of saying you know this level of war fighting currently is not sustainable if the u.s wants to be able to pivot to future conflicts so what do you make of that kind of open floor to discuss and yeah let me know your thoughts and i might interject with more quotes from this as we go on but let's get an initial read for now it's genuinely shocking for me that it took this long for the generals to speak up because we have been saying on this podcast in our videos on war fronts in articles on fronts that this war fighting this war one was a really really bad choice and two how it's being fought we've we've already spoken about the issues with the interceptor stockpiles just how it's being fought is affecting america's war readiness look at the fact that the u.s doesn't have any aircraft carrier in the indo-pacific that is so staggeringly shocking to me that i couldn't even fathom at the start of the year, if you had told me, Wilfred, the U.S. would have an aircraft carrier group in the Indo-Pacific, I wouldn't believe you because the U.S. made such a big deal about the need to curtail China, to restrict China, that now it doesn't even have the ability to react if China does something in the region. So I'm surprised it took this long for people to speak out, to be honest.

I think especially the, and I know, Wilfred, you did an episode on the current state of the Navy in this country. I think this really does underscore just the critical need to really up our game in terms of ship production. It had been something that was lagging for years, and it never really accelerated, and we're definitely seeing the impact of that.

And obviously the point can be made that, okay, well, Washington needs to choose its battles better. Stipulated point taken. But the point being, overall, like the U.S. Navy is not where it should be, in my opinion, at least. speaking about the Navy specifically, this article includes a few choice reports of what Admiral Darrell Cottle, who was the Chief of Naval Operations, put into this report.

Quoting from Washington Post here, the Navy has shouldered an extraordinary burden. It has been asked to take, supply dozens of vessels for the Iran campaign, first to take part in the U.S. assault and defend against Iranian counterattacks, and for several months since, to enforce Trump's blockade of Iranian ports. So on, so on.

Deployments for some vessels and crews have been extended for months. All conveyed to Hegseth that barely one-fourth of the Navy's destroyer fleet is ready to deploy, sharp decline from pre-war levels. More broadly, continuing the impact on ship maintenance, demands imposed by the Iranian operation continues unchanged, jeopardizes the fleet's ability should other conflicts arise, so on and so forth.

So, yeah, what do you make of the situation for the U.S. Navy specifically? Well, so just by the way, the Lincoln just pulled in to, I believe, Thailand and for some shore leave, and that those sailors are going to be creating some headlines in local media is all I can say there. But, yeah, some folks in Pattaya are about to get paid real well. past that one, the broader implications of this are certainly something that's going to be going to be felt for quite some time.

The overall situation in the Indo-Pacific greatly concerns me. Wilfred, to your point there, a lack of presence in that region is certainly alarming. And this is where a situation where if China decides to actually go for something in either be it Taiwan or something else, I mean, our ability to actually respond in a meaningful way would be alarming. low.

And I have to imagine Japan and South Korea are certainly picking up on that exact same thing right now. Now, some of that, in my opinion, is almost healthy that Japan and South Korea might look to bolster their own domestic defense capabilities, especially Japan, which post-war, it was very much the case like Germany, where it was sort of set up by design not to be able to do too much militarily. But we're just simply in a different world at this point.

So I think we're going to continue to see Takaishi move away from the old guard on that. But nevertheless, definitely a concern. So I have done a lot of our coverage on Asia, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, because it's one of those areas that I believe is going to be a major concern in the next few years if we don't treat it right.

And by we, I mean the United States. I consider myself an American citizen when it comes to defense. My friends call me a low-key liberal because of it.

But America's Navy is the core of its fighting force. The army will say different, the air force will say different. But I genuinely believe America's Navy is the most important part of its warfighting capabilities because where else can you deploy such massive amounts of force?

Which other arm of the military can you deploy such massive amounts of force to project American power, right? And I've done a whole episode just discussing the issues with America's Navy. And I don't want to repeat the points I made there.

If you're listening to this podcast, you have already watched that video likely. But the idea that America can continue on the path that it is, fighting the kinds of war that it's fighting and you're preparing for the future of combat in the way that it is, yeah, that's not going to work. So I've seen photos of the USS Lincoln heading into Thai waters and the hull looks so degraded by saltwater.

There's rust everywhere, there's barnacles. It looks like it needs a long, long shore leave and it needs time to be repaired. And while it's in repair, it won't be the only ship in repair.

There are two other ships, I can't remember the names off the top of my head, but there are two other ships that are currently in dry docks, they can't fight. So we're looking at a situation where the US Navy has lost three of its ships. It still doesn't have anything in the Indo-Pacific.

Anyway, it's into, forgive me for editorializing this, into meaningless conflicts on Trump's behalf Latin America, bombing drug ships. That is not a good use of the U.S. Navy. Those ships could be put to better use somewhere else.

And to Kyle's point about your greater cooperation between countries like South Korea and Japan and your greater defense spending over there, I genuinely hope that this is the kick in the rear that those countries need to realize that while the U.S. is a good friend when the right administration is in charge, it can also be a really, really bad friend when the wrong administration is in charge. So they need to take their defense a lot more seriously. Hopefully they can get their defense spending to 5% of GDP.

I think especially for like Japan, it's less administration specific. So I mean, Takeishi has a better relationship with Trump than pretty much any Japanese premier with a U.S. president in my lifetime than I can think of at least. But it's just fundamental, like in the post-war era, it was just like the thing to do where you just like outsource defense to some level to Washington, like, oh, Washington will take care of it.

And that we're just not in that world anymore where that's realistic. I mean, China at the time was just a shell of what it is now. Europe was a basket case in the post-war era, post-war decade, shall we say.

And I mean, it just wasn't, the world was fundamentally a very different place. So when it comes to looking at the 21st century, I mean, we just cannot be applying this like 1945 logic, which I completely understand at the time. I mean, just having come off of, of the war with Japan, obviously, keeping these guys demilitarized is going to be a priority.

But that's, that was a very long time ago at this point. Now, I do want to shift back to the Middle East a little bit and talk about some Iranian internal power politics. So we've seen over the course of this war, Mr. Pazeshki and the president of Iran kind of become a bit of an outcast in his own government.

He is one of the more moderate members of Iran's civilian leadership. He and his political allies have essentially been sidelined by the Islamic Republic. The revolutionary guard corps have been in position for a while to take over the country's leadership rapidly if there were to be wide-scale decapitations that have since happened.

But recently, we've been seeing Pazeshki continue to push back, continue to kind of signal opposition to the IRGC's approach, which has been again, this kind of campaign to absorb loss, absorb costs of war, and continue to retaliate when possible. So how much sway do you believe that Pazeshki has? And what is his play here?

Because it doesn't really seem as if he's managing to create much change on the IRGC side right now. think he institutionally is capable of creating change, unfortunately, because I that there would be a significantly better outcome if he was the thing is it's sort of like well what do you do with the guy at this point so i mean you could fire him because he's not in lockstep with irgc but this would create even more domestic unrest because sacking the president because he's criticizing the military's strategy here is risking the very thing that iran is concerned about in the first place which is another round of mass protests now to be honest i'm not entirely sure how much mass support massoud possess can has amongst iranian people but at the same point he's also sort of the only like last best hope that they may have so at this it's almost like the things that you would gain from firing him are negligible when compared with the risks of getting rid of him so if the alternative being just keep the guy unfortunately for the irgc that means you're going to have to deal with some annoying headlines but it seems that they're willing to tolerate that so far they basically have just been saying yeah he can just go shove it when he when it comes to actually implementing any of what he wants to do but he did play more of an outsized role in the adoption of the memorandum of understanding but the issue of course being that just given how much power the irgc has over the government there none of that actually went anywhere specifically because of the and i have to imagine aragchi knew this going into the deal wording the future of hormuz in such a ambivalent and ambiguous way that just like inherently left it up to interpretation going to obviously come back to bite that deal what role possess kyan played in that i couldn't tell you but i have to imagine he's somebody who is more in the pragmatist camp of look the country here is falling apart economically we cannot continue to just ignore the economy just so that we can own hormuz and he gave an interview the other day with iranian media and he was generating more of those annoying headlines with irgc he said for those who say sanctions have no effect at all i really don't know what to say to them i mean common sense is a good thing that's all i want to say common sense is a really good thing i want to add that one more reason why pezeskin won't be fired is because he's one of the few iranian leaders who has really good ties outside iran you know one of the few iranian leaders that is you was still alive the others galibov agachi they already have so much on their plates they can't do what they're doing right now leading the negotiations and at the same time play the role that possession is playing he's sort of He insulated himself from the worst that the IRGC can do by building up a respectable international profile, sort of like Keir Stam in the UK, despite all of the negative local press he was receiving, he consistently received a lot of good international press. So that simple fact that Pezeshkin is someone who has international credibility, I mean, just this week he met Chinese President Xi Jinping. That amount of credibility means that he can be a thorn in the side of the IRGC for a little bit, and they will just have to stomach it.

And let's talk about the Chinese side of this as well. So this week, the Shanghai Cooperative Organization got together and had a meeting between China, Russia, all the other members of that organization. politicians, of course, were present during that time. According to an Iranian politician called Hossein Mirashi, basically China related to Iran, but there are a few conditions at this point that are going to be, that essentially continued Chinese-Iranian cooperation are going to be contingent on, as well as the expansion of the relationship between the two countries.

Those include, according to this, again, Iranian politician who was speaking about this on Iranian state media, China wants, one, for Iran to open the strait, two, for Iran to not impose a tolling regime. Unclear whether this is not to impose a tolling regime on China or to not impose it on anybody, and its disputes with Saudi Arabia, and its disputes with the U.S. Now, again, this is an Iranian politician, no real confirmation on the Chinese side, no real official state confirmation from Iran, or from any other intelligence groups that were obviously watching this meeting. what do you make of that claim on its face, and would that have an impact on this conflict? I think that if China wanted to be really, really smart on this, and I don't know if they'd be able to pull it off, but one of the greatest soft power victories for this conflict would be if China could be the force that got Iran to agree not to put tolls in the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, to your point, Evan, I actually do think that what they're prioritizing there making sure Chinese vessels are not tolled, but we've already seen that Iran has been pretty open to not tolling them. So we may actually be seeing China move into a position where it's saying, okay, we want to make sure international shipping, and this presumably would exclude Israeli and American ships, but international shipping, X, those two, would be toll-free. would win over so many. I mean, so the thing with China is, for a long time, they've sort of, they've sort of, haven't won themselves too many friends in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia. have long gotten the sense that they haven't really tried that hard.

There have been some attempts for sure, but by and large, there hasn't been any measure at which China has really thrown itself. It's been pretty quiet, especially during this conflict. So if they're able to enter this and be like the country that gets Iran to back down and after six months and two days of but who's counting of this conflict, if they say if they're the ones who can actually come out and say, yes, got to be the country that gets Iran to back off of tolling in Hormuz, then that would be a huge diplomatic W for them.

Yeah, I agree. There would be obviously, again, don't know for sure whether this is China's plan. That would be a major coup if they were able to do it.

I would only add if that were to be what China wants to do, you don't even place a limitation on American and Israeli ships if you can help it. You make every American and Israeli ship that goes through the Strait of Hormuz toll-free from this point forward able to do it contingent on Chinese intervention. Yeah, that would be like the number one outcome.

To be honest, I just don't see Iran being willing to bend to that for other reasons than the tolls writ large. But that would be an even bigger W for Beijing at that point. Now, China already has a major diplomatic win because of this war.

China is the only reason the world isn't dealing with a massive oil crisis right now because it cut down its oil imports by more than half. It opened up its strategic reserves. It basically saved the entire world from economic collapse because days when the Strait was closed, everyone was afraid that we'd be dealing with a massive, massive fuel shortage.

But it ended up only being a few million barrels per day and countries could absorb that without as much economic pain as if it were the 20 plus million barrels a day we were expecting to see. So that's already a dub in China's column. And I agree with you guys.

If it got Iran to drop its plan to put tolls on ships passing through the street of Homo, then yeah, that will be another big dub. But already Iran has its own reasons for trying to put tolls on ships passing through the street. So that might be a little bit easier said than done.

I want to talk a little bit about just how much China seems to be benefiting from the Trump presidency and Trump's decisions, you know, for example, starting this war in Iran. I have a video out home fronts and it goes in depth on it but if trump continues giving china your easy win serving them up on a platter then he's really really earning his nickname of comrade trump someone that the chinese the chinese social media has been putting in red ccp shirts just because of how beneficial he has been to china's diplomacy he's been more beneficial than anything china could have done you within like a 10 year span that's how beneficial i think trump has been i almost think that we may need a an asia podcast but barring that i do think that this underscores like given just how much of a rise china has been going through over the certainly not just the last few years i'm talking long term here i think the u.s is willingness to pursue various adventures slash misadventures in the mid east is certainly not going to come back to be seen as particularly wise especially given just like china has been in the luxury position of saying or of not having to do any of those things they can sort pursue their own interests as well as their own build-up of whatever they see fit for while we are at critical lows over an issue that really i do have to say need not have been fought and i say that with a particular added weight there because i was i have been on this podcast more of i would say more of an iran hawk myself but overall just the terrible strategy that has been fought or in this war has been very disheartening for the country long term and i do want to as long as we're pivoting to iranian internal politics and dynamics i want to just raise one point on the israeli side before we head up for the day israel kind of parallel to all of this right is going through a good bit of domestic upheaval with elections coming in october obviously the war in iran and the future of israeli military operations against iran is going to be a major focal point of that election as is the rising threat from turkey as israel describes it and very much as netanyahu describes it so as we look toward the really intense few weeks of israeli political season what do you anticipate as far as things to watch major changes coming from the israeli side so i have to imagine if the netanyahu coalition loses which i think it likely will israeli politics are wild they change all the time parties come and go like you've never seen before so it's if anybody ever tells you what's going to happen more than two days in advance of israeli politics on the opposite because it's usually It usually changes that fast. But this time around, it really does seem as though Netanyahu has bit off more than he can chew politically.

His coalition has been steadily underperforming. And so the opposition, which have many issues themselves, they don't particularly agree on a whole hell of a lot other than we're against Netanyahu. They would certainly institute what I would characterize as a PR renaissance for the country, because in particular, having Itamar Ben-Gavir and to some extent Bezalel Smotrich in government has led to enormous numbers of completely unnecessary negative headlines for Israel that has not benefited the Israeli cause in any way.

But has in fact been a detriment to it. So somebody like Naftali Bennett can bring the argument to the country. OK, I mean, certainly Bennett, he is himself a settler.

He is not going to be conciliatory on these issues. But he's also not going to be out there doing and saying the things that Ben-Gavir, who was convicted under Israeli law of having supported terrorism or terrorist entities. He's not going to be doing that.

So it's going to be a very public relations oriented restart. Gadi Eisenkot, on the other hand, of the Yashar party, he's emerged as potentially the next prime minister. guys would be in coalition with each other. So it'd be kind of a interesting game to see how it all shakes out there, who gets what position.

But Eisenkot has been more willing to actually propose different policies rather than just a different PR approach. exactly a pro two-state solution person, but he's also against the E1 settlement expansion. And I do think that you'd see a significant crackdown on West Bank Israeli terrorist incidents there, where you have these Jewish extremists who basically go around terrorizing people. benefit to Israel. It's no benefit to not even to the settlements themselves.

There are settlers in the West Bank who are growing increasingly annoyed by this, including Bennett, because it just it reeks of anarchy where the IDF is deploying to the areas where these settlers are just going around being anarchists. And IDF is fundamentally not willing or able to confront them because the person who runs the police, Itamar Ben-Gavir, has their back. I say their back, I don't mean the IDFs.

Yeah, it will be really interesting to see how of this shakes out from an internal perspective for Israel, but then also how that impacts foreign policy moving ahead. from especially the U.S. Jewish communities. community and also the global Jewish community has certainly faced a bit of attrition in the last little while. And it will be really fascinating to see how a new Israeli government, if we do indeed get one, is going to go about trying to rehabilitate those ties at the same time as the Israeli defense industrial complex is kind of spinning up for this prolonged period of war and standoff with Iran, proxy conflict with Turkey, right? The kind of a subsurface changes in Israel are all pointing toward kind of an acceleration of that, you know, more militaristic side of Israeli policy.

So it will be very interesting to see how a new leader, if we get one, kind of tries to toe the line on that. It's certainly something I'm going to be keeping an eye on. At some point, as the election draws closer, I think we should do like an episode that's like heavily dedicated to Israel's election because there's so many moving components and there's like so much going on there all times.

And it really is quite interesting in terms of the different factions and coalitions and how this all may play out. But overall, moving forward, I just I have to imagine for Bibi, it's going to be an enormous uphill battle to get his coalition, which inherently doesn't even agree on that much itself, because he's in coalition with very hardline people like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir. But at the same time, he's in coalition or was in coalition with the two Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, who are the ones pushing for draft exemptions, further draft exemptions for Haredim in the country.

So the whole thing really fell apart there. And now Ben-Gavir is refusing to work with Smotrich's party itself, where now they're risking not being able to cross the 3.25 threshold to get into Knesset. So it's quite a mess.

Kyle, if we end up doing a video on the ins and outs of Israeli politics as we get closer to election, I'd love for you write it. You have such a wealth of knowledge on it. It's genuinely a pleasure to listen to you talk about it.

I appreciate that. It's it's certainly it's like unlike any country I've ever seen in terms of parties, just the sheer number of them, but also the way that they just come and go. Naftali Bennett is such a good example of this because he got his start in politics as Likud, and then formed a party or was a head guy in the party called Jewish Home Party.

And after that sort of fell apart and Jewish Home, by the way, was to the right of Likud. So he moved right. And then after that fell apart, his current party, which is in coalition with Yair Lapid's party, they formed this thing called Together.

Lapid is to Bibi's center. And so it's just this crazy convoluted system where It's like right and left don't even apply on some level. This is crazy back and forth.

Absolutely. just a second, everything that Wilford had said as well. looking forward to that episode before the elections, if and when we do get it. up for today, I would love to know what else you guys have on the horizon. anything you're watching in the coming week, anything that you're particularly concerned about, particularly enthusiastic about, please do let us know so we can all follow along and then meet back here next week. I am watching the situation inside Iran, specifically because of its economy. The Iranian economy is doing badly enough that Iranian security officials are speaking out on social media, talking about just how late their payments are becoming, how little they can actually afford with these payments, and just in general how bad the economic situation is.

So for me, that is the main thing I'm watching and what arises because of that. that's where my mind is at this week. then I am keeping Lebanon on sort of a back burner. We have more kinetic action out of there, but at the same time, it's sort of the same old, same old, unfortunately. basically, the Ali Al-Tahir hills have been the epicenter of focus from both Hezbollah and Israel. that story for another day. But back and forth, we have Hezbollah attacking IDF, IDF responding by attacking Hezbollah.

The rest of Lebanon really just caught as hostages in that war, which is why I try to cover Lebanon whenever I get the opportunity, because it's really an entity unlike any other, where because of the base of support that Hezbollah has had with certain aspects of the Lebanese population, it's still a minority, though. So the overwhelming majority of the country just wants to sort of get on with life, but they've been just bogged down in this nonsense fight for decades at this point. similarly, I will be watching developments in Yemen. rebels have been a bit too quiet this week after pretty expensive several rounds of strikes in the weeks prior. I am curious what they have brewing because I am very, very sure that it's whatever it is, it's not going to be nothing.

So I'll keep an eye on them. then the only other thing that I would point out as well would be Iran's focus on draining U.S. interceptor missiles. something we're seeing in Ukraine as well, where Russia is really, really trying to stay on top of Ukraine's interceptor count now that it knows that Ukraine is facing a dire shortage. It seems as if Iran is trying to push toward a similar strategy here where Iran may be looking to deplete U.S. air defense as much as it possibly can now that it knows that stocks are running low and that the U.S. internal defense industrial bases, facing some concerns about that. So certainly I want to see where that goes.

And then other than that, I believe we will convene back here in about a week to discuss all of the many, many, many other headlines that I'm sure we're going to get between now and then. As for today, however, that has been the Middle East Roundtable. If you've gotten this far on the podcast, you are almost certainly one of our premium subscribers to Frontstar Co.

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As for today, this has been Evan Maloney at Frontstar Co. with Moran and Wilford Mina. Thank you very much for joining us, and we'll see you next week.
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